Movie review: Itzhak Perlman’s magical musical life gets short shrift

Al Alexander More Content Now

Thursday

Mar 22, 2018 at 1:11 PMMar 22, 2018 at 1:11 PM

There’s more to making a documentary than simply turning on the camera and following your subject around hoping his — or her — charisma will carry you through. It’s a rule that eludes documentarian Alison Chernick in “Itzhak,” her meandering, shapeless profile of violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman.

His infectious personality does carry the film — for a while. But the mind starts to wander when repetition — we see him receiving awards from various heads of state and mentoring children at Juilliard and his own Perlman Music Program — begins to settle in for a long stay. Missing is any attempt to delve inside Perlman’s still youthful 72-year-old head. It’s as if Chernick isn’t the least bit inquisitive about a man who triumphed over naysayers and polio to become arguably the world’s finest living violinist.

Even cameos by Billy Joel, inviting Perlman to liven up “We Didn’t Start the Fire” during a concert at Madison Square Garden and old pal Alan Alda stopping by Perlman’s Manhattan residence for dinner and conversation, feel cursory and underdeveloped. Chernick fares slightly better at conveying the undying devotion between Perlman and his wife of 51 years, Toby. They are a delight, still as mad for each other as they were when they met as teenagers in violin school.

Still, like Perlman’s gregarious personality, it can carry the movie only so far before their shared love of children, music and baseball take on sameness. This is that rare documentary where you rue the filmmaker’s decision to stay out of the picture. You almost ache for Chernick to interject and query Perlman about all he’s seen and accomplished, like overcoming the ravages of polio, which left him encumbered in steel braces for decades, or his struggles to assimilate when his parents brought him to New York from Israel when he was just a lad. And what is it about music in general and the violin in particular that have made them the source of his being?

These are things you yearn to know, but Chernick won’t allow it, choosing instead to keep everything strictly on the surface, hoping the cameos by Alda and Joel, and nostalgic archival clips of a 13-year-old Perlman appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” will keep us intrigued. And at a visceral level, they do. But you crave more; especially what it is that makes him so rooted in his Jewish faith and how he relies on it to make him whole. About as close as we get is barely a mention of his Holocaust-surviving parents when the subject turns to his most requested song, his ghostly solo on the haunting John Williams soundtrack for “Schindler’s List.”

When we watch him play it, it’s all he can do to hold back the tears as he is clearly overcome by emotion. Obviously, it has deep-seated meaning to him, but we’re left to guess as to why. Yet, there’s no denying this is the point when you are drawn closest to Perlman and his extraordinary gift. It’s more than just music; it’s an expression of who he is and for what he stands. It’s a pleasure to be in the presence of his compassion, his talent and his marvelous sense of humor. Yes, he’s an excellent, self-deprecating joke-teller, one of the few things I didn’t already know about him. But he’s an even better humanitarian, making the world a better place one perfectly played note at a time.